Example embodiments of the inventive concepts relate to semiconductor memory devices. For example, at least some example embodiments relate to a memory device and/or a memory system that perform an internal copy operation in order to support memory defragmentation.
A system provides an environment enabling users to easily and efficiently use application programs based on an operating system (OS). The OS may allocate, manage, and protect system hardware and software resources, monitor for errors generated in user programs or wrong use of resources, and manage calculations and control of resources such as an input/output device. The OS may allocate a program code, which is a collection of commands and data, to a memory device in order to execute an application program. During the memory allocation, the OS may store, via paging, the program code in units of pages that each have a certain size of a block. In memory devices, since the program code may be stored in discontinuous data regions of the memory device, fragmentation of the memory cell region may occur. A system may require a memory device to have an empty continuous memory space for storing a big amount of data. In this case, the memory device may need to perform a copy operation to secure an empty continuous memory space.